Forum:Author Names vs. Pen Names
I'd like to begin a discussion on how the wiki will deal with author names versus pen names. Specifically, I'm looking for information about the fanfiction.net kerfluffle and how it was or wasn't handle to authors' satisfaction levels. The goal of the discussion would be to come to consensus on how to deal with author names and redirects to them or from them with a specific emphasis on ensuring that an author's desires are balanced with what will help users of the wiki find out information about the fan fiction that those authors have written.--Kodia 17:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC) :We can certainly use the author-preferred name as the title of the Author article. But what about the stories? :I'm not thinking so much about the people who have always written under a pen name. That's fine. The problem arises with people who've changed their name. The original one is going to appear on the linked-in archived story, which is off on another site. We have no control over that except to omit the link, which would reduce the usefulness of the wiki. Besides which, the archive still exists—and is eminently googleable. :That being the case, people will be able to find out the name the author originally wrote under. The questions then are: :* should both names be listed in the article? :* should the original name be offered as a redirect? :Certainly, if we don't have the latter, the usefulness of the wiki is reduced for people who remember the author's stories under her original name. -- Greer Watson 19:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC) Exactly my point on the redirections. I personally believe they will be what make the wiki useful. But again, I have no information on the kerfluffle, so I don't know how that would be taken by those people who choose to go by other names. --Kodia 20:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC) :It occurs to me that there is a valid distinction to be made here between people who have never written except under a pen name, and those who have changed names at some point. :Outing the former is wrong, even if you know who they really are—though, of course, they themselves are free to authorize identification. But that's up to the author personally, and would need to be authorized explicitly by them. :On the other hand, as far as redirects are concerned, they are of practical use only when someone is searching under the other name. And they can only do this if they already know the name! :All we are doing with a redirect is saying A = B. And, in fact, we are doing that anyway by having the Author page under B, but linking to stories that were posted under A. This means that redirects shouldn't be seen as a problem. -- Greer Watson 13:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Well, I think the authorization might be debatable given the idea of publicly posted or publicly available information on the internet, but yes, in general I agree with you. I don't think we should out people who have always written under pen names who we happen to privately know who they are. For people who write under pennames, I think we should leave those names as is. For people who have written under other names but now write under new names (pen names or otherwise) I think those old names should be redirected to the name under which the writer currently publishes. My real problem comes with what to do about the information on that author's page. Let's use me as an example. In the past, I've written under the following names: Gaylin, Gaylin Walli, Gaylin "Jasmine" Walli, Jasmine, Iasmin, and Kodia. I think any of the fiction I've written is under three of those. If I were making an author page for me as an outsider, I would put the information under "Gaylin Walli" and redirect to that. But... What do we do about the information on that page. Not the redirects, but the information about other names under which I wrote? You mentioned it above and I personally am okay with a note that says "Gaylin has also published FK stories under the following names: blah blah blah." I personally want to know this. What I'm concerned about are those authors who don't want this known. We can't prevent people from adding this information. How do we reconcile it?--Kodia 15:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC) :Really, though, this is a case of form versus substance, isn't it? :Formally, you are distinguishing between what is explicitly written in the text and what is only implicitly there, in as much as you will figure it out if you click on all the links. Substantively, the info is still there—just not written out. :I don't see how, in that case, you can stop someone from :* taking the implicit info and figuring out that Gaylin, Jasmine, and Kodia are all one and the same, :* deciding that the text and story links were done by different people, :* not guessing that the omission was deliberate, :* concluding that the person who wrote the text either wrote that first, or was an idiot for not putting two and two together, and :* kindly doing the edit for us. :You can, of course, then revert the page to the previous version. With an explanation. (Or it will happen again.) -- Greer Watson 15:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Again, not disagreeing with you and ultimately that might just be the path we have to take, but I'd like to not have it happen that we revert just because someone says "I don't like this." Maybe that's the meat of it. Personal information not commonly available doesn't belong. If something like a name or an address are available on a website as a contact, then permission to pass that information along by inclusion in the wiki would seem to be implied. If someone has their old stories archived and has given permission for it to be so, then I would think it's also implied, but that's where I think people disagree. I suspect I'll have to do a little woodgie writing on the Forum:Proposal: Biographical Information Guidelines to say it more elegantly if it isn't clear (and I've not read through that entire thing yet, so comments are forthcoming there).--Kodia 15:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)